Arctic Blast is objectively the worst burst heal in the entire game.

RisKKR · May 1

With subclassing coming up can we please make Arctic Blast a viable and attractive heal for people to use again? If people adopt the Winter’s Embrace skill line it would be nice to have an alternate heal to Polar Wind that doesn’t incentivise stacking 40k+ health.

Arctic Blast’s heal proc condition (of having nothing be within a 6m radius of you) renders the ability completely useless as a burst heal - every Warden since the nerf a year ago has been running Healing Soul, Healing Contingency or stacking 40k+ health with Polar Wind to heal.

The reason people don’t use Arctic Blast as a heal anymore is because the heal’s clearance condition is borderline impossible to meet and unfair - you’ll always have enemies near you in combat regardless of how much stamina you burn rolling and running away to try make distance. Playing LoS is buggy too with AoEs so there's no hope avoiding hitting enemies that way for a heal. If you’re lucky you’ll only burn about ≈12k magicka trying to get this ≈9k heal off.

The pre-nerfed Arctic Blast already compensated with the ‘power’ of having a CC and heal in one skill by making the the CC avoidable and on a 3 second delay - all the skill ultimately helped with was freeing up bar space:
If the devs still stand by their lone opinion on the pre-nerfed Arctic Blast being ‘overpowered’ and therefore unacceptable, can they then explain to us why it’s okay that Healing Contingency can be scripted to function better than Arctic Blast ever has? Healing Contingency can literally have an unconditional AoE heal, AoE snare, AoE CC and Minor Force in ONE skill - yet Arctic Blast was too much? How about the fact that Healing Soul has power crept nearly every self-heal in the game, so much so that many people STILL wouldn’t bother using Arctic Blast again even if you reverted the nerfs?

When the nerf was in patch notes a year ago the community expressed disagreement and confusion (as nobody had complained about that state of Arctic Blast being ‘overpowered’). The devs decided to proceed with the heal clearance condition and 10% tooltip nerf regardless. I think it’s fair to say a year is enough time to test whether that was a good judgment call - and it clearly wasn’t, the players were right.

Can you revert the nerfs please, or at least as a compromise can you keep the 10% heal reduction but make the heal have no clearance condition again?

Soarora · May 1

Pleaaaase yes change arctic blast back. I couldn't even use it in BRP, I died trying to heal myself even after actively running away from enemies to try to be out of range of them. It was not an OP heal, there's more cost-effective options. I don't even think the instant stunning was a problem... especially now that we have charm which is worse?

ESO_Nightingale · May 1

huge agree here, even if they keep the heal lower or even just remove the crap stun to have the heal how it once was, i'd be okay with that, but the condition of not hitting enemies to heal is so awful i don't know who thought it was a good idea.

Joy_Division · May 1

All true and we said so during the PTS when it was changed.

It's insane to have a conditional heal.

ceruulean · May 1

Yeah everyone said that Polar Wind was the problem morph in PvP and the devs went and changed Arctic Blast. I hope the devs can do the right thing and revert Arctic Wind to a decent dmg+heal skill like nightblades have with Sap Essence or Arcanist has with flail

tomofhyrule · May 1

Yes, please revert this one. There are so many times you go to heal and it just... doesn't, and then you get clapped.

Polar Wind was the problematic morph in PvP. Arctic Blast wasn't really that overloaded considering the stun was not instant and was totally avoidable.

LunaFlora · May 1

yes please.
i really dislike that change so much.

Turtle_Bot · May 1

This change is the main reason I haven't played my warden much. The Polar morph just never meshed with me, but Arctic was my favourite heal on my warden (DW PvP DD stamden with 30-32k health).

MATH_COW · May 1

Everybody agree with that.
We tried to make them reverse that change when they introduced it but they didn't listen.
I still hope they gonna change it back but I feel we'll wait a long time before it happens...

Markytous · May 1

Dedicate Arctic Blast to a CC and Damage Over Time. We don't need this "sometimes it heals" condition. I only use the skill to activate the passive which needs dealing Frost Damage while getting a stun out of it. If it must be a heal, don't make the heal happen inconsistently. One thing or the other.

FoJul · May 2

Didn't they state it's not an on demand burst heal anymore?

Thumbless_Bot · May 2

Right. I dont think it's a burst heal any more.

MashmalloMan · May 2

I can't realistically see them allowing the skill to behave like it did before while retaining what is has now because of the power budget, but it should definitely be shifted away from the weird proc condition with some rebalancing.

Arctic Blast's tooltip of 1799 upfront with 6m radius makes it equal (1742-1799) to AOE spammables, with guaranteed chilled using Charged, it's better than most aoe spammables outside Fatecarver or Jabs. Despite that, it also doubles up as a self AOE DOT, with a low tooltip and high chill chance, it competes and exceeds Deadly Cloak. I think it's obvious the majority of the power budget is spent on the damage side so I think that aspect should remain as is. Frankly I'm surprised it's held the stun and heal for this long, but it seems ZOS justified keeping both by forcing the player to pick between the burst damage or burst heal.

I think majority of Warden's find the heal to be unreliable, forgettable, and clunky. Exact same thing could be said about the stun. The stun was only requested for years because Warden lacked an on demand option, but scribing, Warden's class script, and subclassing is here to great effect.. I'd say it's time to say goodbye to the stun and allow the heal to work seemlessly again.

With that in mind, I'd completely remove the 2s delayed stun, make the heal on demand all the time, but reduce the value from 2323 to 1799. This balances it at half the value of a single target burst heal (3485-3600), justified by the fact that it's also doing 1799 damage on cast.

An alternative to the 1799 heal is to make it a % of the direct damage dealt. It would probably be easier to balance, but feels a bit too similar to Sap Essence. Also a change in playstyle as you're incentivised to be aggressive since it does nothing without an enemy. Probably not for Warden.

Could also change the upfront heal into a 20s hot, would be like old Rally. I was going to say it'd be hard to explain on the morph description, but they flat out gave up with the current version. It doesn't explain that the duration doubles from 10s to 20s, nor does it specifiy that the hot changing into a dot is not dependent on if you hit an enemy or not, or that it no longer scales from health. Point is they just made the jump to the skill they wanted instead of worrying too much about how it evolved from the base skill.

I'd take any of the above over what it is now.

birdik · May 3

Nah, warden unkillable healbot tanks deserved that

Turtle_Bot · May 3

birdik wrote: »

Nah, warden unkillable healbot tanks deserved that

Those wardens used the other morph, Polar Wind.

Arctic Blast was used by DD wardens that would typically max out at 30k health (in PvP).

RisKKR · May 5

.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I can't realistically see them allowing the skill to behave like it did before while retaining what is has now because of the power budget, but it should definitely be shifted away from the weird proc condition with some rebalancing.

Arctic Blast's tooltip of 1799 upfront with 6m radius makes it equal (1742-1799) to AOE spammables, with guaranteed chilled using Charged, it's better than most aoe spammables outside Fatecarver or Jabs. Despite that, it also doubles up as a self AOE DOT, with a low tooltip and high chill chance, it competes and exceeds Deadly Cloak. I think it's obvious the majority of the power budget is spent on the damage side so I think that aspect should remain as is. Frankly I'm surprised it's held the stun and heal for this long, but it seems ZOS justified keeping both by forcing the player to pick between the burst damage or burst heal.

I think majority of Warden's find the heal to be unreliable, forgettable, and clunky. Exact same thing could be said about the stun. The stun was only requested for years because Warden lacked an on demand option, but scribing, Warden's class script, and subclassing is here to great effect.. I'd say it's time to say goodbye to the stun and allow the heal to work seemlessly again.

With that in mind, I'd completely remove the 2s delayed stun, make the heal on demand all the time, but reduce the value from 2323 to 1799. This balances it at half the value of a single target burst heal (3485-3600), justified by the fact that it's also doing 1799 damage on cast.

An alternative to the 1799 heal is to make it a % of the direct damage dealt. It would probably be easier to balance, but feels a bit too similar to Sap Essence. Also a change in playstyle as you're incentivised to be aggressive since it does nothing without an enemy. Probably not for Warden.

Could also change the upfront heal into a 20s hot, would be like old Rally. I was going to say it'd be hard to explain on the morph description, but they flat out gave up with the current version. It doesn't explain that the duration doubles from 10s to 20s, nor does it specifiy that the hot changing into a dot is not dependent on if you hit an enemy or not, or that it no longer scales from health. Point is they just made the jump to the skill they wanted instead of worrying too much about how it evolved from the base skill.

I'd take any of the above over what it is now.

The damage power you mentioned of Arctic Blast was designed for and only significant to PvE - which is why it was primarily the PvP community confused and annoyed about why the aspect mainly relevant to PvP gameplay (the heal) got gutted to ‘compensate’. Removing the heal condition on paper might seem concerning to some, but the reality is negligible to PvE and PvP gameplay; in most scenarios it’s suboptimal to spam it in terms of damage and sustain. It’s evidence in the laughable conditions given to Arctic Blast’s heal in the first place that these devs clearly aren’t playing the same game as us, never mind trusting them to intuitively judge what is supposedly problematic to the power budget. Even if they removed the heal condition on Arctic Blast, it would remain a lesser alternate to the scribing heals for many players.

If they removed the heal condition but removed the CC too, half the PvP appeal of the skill would be gone. The handful of PvPers who even use Arctic Blast at the moment are using it for the CC, and without it the skill is seriously power-crept by Healing Soul and Healing Contingency.

Why we are even debating the ‘power of Arctic Blast’ again in 2025 is beyond me. The devs could’ve satisfied the desire for a Warden PvE AoE spamable via the unused Frozen Gate skill or by one of its morphs. They could’ve made the morph function differently, just like the Sorcerer’s Bound Armaments. Instead they decided to make a complete mess of Arctic Blast which was in a form that nobody took issue with and was popularly used across both PvP/PvE.

megancarrington · May 31

I quit ESO over that AB heal nerf lol. I only play stamden and refused to buy the scribing just to get a working burst heal again. It felt like I was being scammed. Luckily they announced recently that they are gonna give us scribing for free now though.

But id still rather use AB as a heal again to get access to the chilled passives. The devs need to get rid of that heal condition, it doesn't work ever. No idea what they were thinking.

I refuse to believe that the devs who claim a double merciless resolve proc is 'balanced', but a functional heal on AB is 'unbalanced', are the same people...

megancarrington · May 31

FoJul wrote: »

Didn't they state it's not an on demand burst heal anymore?

Doubt it, because an 'off demand burst heal' doesn't make any sense... wait maybe the devs did state that then

cuddles_with_wroble · May 31

Just make it the same thing as polar wind but with wpn damage scaling and have a frost dot

Remove the garbage cc and give warden a real cc if they really care, you already have scribing charm tho so idk why you need a cc

xylena_lazarow · May 31

Yes, please make Arctic Blast just be normal, not a dice roll whether it's going to heal you or not.

ESO_Nightingale · June 1

RisKKR wrote: »

.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I can't realistically see them allowing the skill to behave like it did before while retaining what is has now because of the power budget, but it should definitely be shifted away from the weird proc condition with some rebalancing.

Arctic Blast's tooltip of 1799 upfront with 6m radius makes it equal (1742-1799) to AOE spammables, with guaranteed chilled using Charged, it's better than most aoe spammables outside Fatecarver or Jabs. Despite that, it also doubles up as a self AOE DOT, with a low tooltip and high chill chance, it competes and exceeds Deadly Cloak. I think it's obvious the majority of the power budget is spent on the damage side so I think that aspect should remain as is. Frankly I'm surprised it's held the stun and heal for this long, but it seems ZOS justified keeping both by forcing the player to pick between the burst damage or burst heal.

I think majority of Warden's find the heal to be unreliable, forgettable, and clunky. Exact same thing could be said about the stun. The stun was only requested for years because Warden lacked an on demand option, but scribing, Warden's class script, and subclassing is here to great effect.. I'd say it's time to say goodbye to the stun and allow the heal to work seemlessly again.

With that in mind, I'd completely remove the 2s delayed stun, make the heal on demand all the time, but reduce the value from 2323 to 1799. This balances it at half the value of a single target burst heal (3485-3600), justified by the fact that it's also doing 1799 damage on cast.

An alternative to the 1799 heal is to make it a % of the direct damage dealt. It would probably be easier to balance, but feels a bit too similar to Sap Essence. Also a change in playstyle as you're incentivised to be aggressive since it does nothing without an enemy. Probably not for Warden.

Could also change the upfront heal into a 20s hot, would be like old Rally. I was going to say it'd be hard to explain on the morph description, but they flat out gave up with the current version. It doesn't explain that the duration doubles from 10s to 20s, nor does it specifiy that the hot changing into a dot is not dependent on if you hit an enemy or not, or that it no longer scales from health. Point is they just made the jump to the skill they wanted instead of worrying too much about how it evolved from the base skill.

I'd take any of the above over what it is now.

The damage power you mentioned of Arctic Blast was designed for and only significant to PvE - which is why it was primarily the PvP community confused and annoyed about why the aspect mainly relevant to PvP gameplay (the heal) got gutted to ‘compensate’. Removing the heal condition on paper might seem concerning to some, but the reality is negligible to PvE and PvP gameplay; in most scenarios it’s suboptimal to spam it in terms of damage and sustain. It’s evidence in the laughable conditions given to Arctic Blast’s heal in the first place that these devs clearly aren’t playing the same game as us, never mind trusting them to intuitively judge what is supposedly problematic to the power budget. Even if they removed the heal condition on Arctic Blast, it would remain a lesser alternate to the scribing heals for many players.

If they removed the heal condition but removed the CC too, half the PvP appeal of the skill would be gone. The handful of PvPers who even use Arctic Blast at the moment are using it for the CC, and without it the skill is seriously power-crept by Healing Soul and Healing Contingency.

Why we are even debating the ‘power of Arctic Blast’ again in 2025 is beyond me. The devs could’ve satisfied the desire for a Warden PvE AoE spamable via the unused Frozen Gate skill or by one of its morphs. They could’ve made the morph function differently, just like the Sorcerer’s Bound Armaments. Instead they decided to make a complete mess of Arctic Blast which was in a form that nobody took issue with and was popularly used across both PvP/PvE.

Big agree here when arctic blast was a solid burst heal stun and AoE DoT it was totally fine where it was. No-one had any issues with it.